


There and Back Again

by LadyAJ_13



Category: Endeavour (TV), Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: 1970s, Episode: s01e02 Fugue, Gen, No spoilers for Endeavour s7, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:49:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22961962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAJ_13/pseuds/LadyAJ_13
Summary: The Manchester police force is woefully short on opera specialists, so when a new killer starts spouting like a crackpot, the higher ups call in help from Oxford.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 39





	There and Back Again

_Gene_

Gene looks the newcomer up and down with a curl to his lip that'll tell the entire world exactly what he thinks about being foisted with a DS from Oxford, of all places. And not even one that can hold his own, but this one – softer than a baby's bum by the looks of it, worse even than Tyler when he'd started. Least he'd had a bit of fire, a bit of grit to his knuckles when he could be convinced to use them. Not like this one, the lines at his eyes not enough to harden him.

“Tyler!” he barks. Sam looks up slowly. “He's here. Your responsibility. I'm off down the pub.”

It's too early really, but too late to start anything else. He sees the look on the new sergeant's face at the mention of the pub and groans inwardly – the last thing he needs is their bloody Bambi wanting to join in. He might have been lumbered with the man – and only because this latest case features a crackpot with a hard on for opera, and that's not exactly in his comfort zone – but he isn't going to make him welcome.

He realises his mistake, of course, half an hour later when his DI enters the Railway Arms with said DS.

“Get you a drink?” Sam asks, perching on a bar stool and smiling all friendly like at the newcomer. What's his name again? Moose? Something like that.

“Thanks, a beer.”

He takes deep pulls on it as soon as Nelson sets it in front of him, half the liquid disappearing in seconds. Gene frowns. He doesn't look like he'd have a head for booze on him. Well. He's not going to be the one scraping him off the pavement come closing.

“So Oxford. What's that like?”

Moose shrugs. “It's okay.”

“See a lot of opera crackpots down there?”

To the untrained eye, Moose looks fine. Gene's eye is trained, though, and he notices the slight stiffening of his shoulders, the way he hides his face in another gulp of beer. So does Sam, by the way he spins on his stool and nods at the dart board. “You play?”

It becomes clear as the night wears on that no, Morse – because that little blunder got cleared up sometime around pint three – does not play darts, and subsequently owes Nelson a whack of his next pay packet to mend the holes in the wall. After that, he sits in a corner and puts away more booze than his slight frame would look to allow for, and fills out the cryptic crossword in Nelson's paper in under ten minutes.

He stays until closing, and Gene watches Sam watch Morse wend his way down the street, even as he gets fed up and yanks him into the passenger seat by the jacket. “What, Guv?” Sam asks, scrubbing a hand over his hair.

“Can't a fella do something nice for his DI without the bleeding inquisition?”

“Nice?”

“Driving you 'ome, Sammy-boy.”

He soon pulls up and pushes Sam out of the car in front of his flat with a grin. It isn't the first time he's driven him home in a fit of alcohol-fuelled generosity, but he can't help thinking this time, there's something lurking underneath. And he doesn’t like to question himself too closely – start that and you're in a world of trouble, spiralling down until you're blubbering about the time daddy took away your favourite bear – but he doesn't want his misfit fitting too closely with that misfit.

That's all.

_Sam_

“All right?” Sam swings into his desk, Morse perched on a chair next to it. Seems maintenance never did quite get around to making a space for him last night. No matter. He shifts some of his papers, opening up a gap for Morse to use. He's doing a crossword again, half the squares filled and ink staining his hand. “You like those?”

“What?”

He nods at the paper. “Crosswords.”

“Oh.” Morse looks down like he hadn't even realised what he was doing, but Sam watches the way his eyes skip over the clues. “Yeah, I suppose.”

“I could never make sense of the cryptic ones.” There's something about Morse. Something that makes him want to engage – because who knows how long this case will take, but it's pretty clear none of the others will bother, except maybe Chris, and he can't imagine that would go well – and Sam knows what it's like to be transported to a strange place, alone. Mind you, the 1970s is probably worse than a hundred and fifty miles up the M6. “Knowledge ones, sure, but trying to bend my brain around some of these clues-” he leans over to read them, and sure enough, they may as well be gobbledegook for all the sense he can make. Even some of the answers Morse has filled in leave him no more enlightened.

“My brain bends that way anyway. At least here,” he gestures with the paper ruefully, “it's some use.”

“Some use in this case, too.” They'd gone over the files briefly last night, bringing Morse up to speed with what they couldn’t relay over the phone before he left. “I asked Annie to give us an overview today too.”

“Annie?”

“DC Cartwright,” he corrects himself. “But she's our... resident psychologist,” he says eventually. “I know it's kind of out there, but she profiles-”

To his surprise, Morse is nodding. “We've used them too.”

“Really?” He'd thought they were a 2006 thing. But here's Morse saying Oxford use them too. “When?”

“Few years ago...” His face clears. “'65.”

Nine whole years ago. Jesus. And he thought Manchester was backward because he was out of place. Maybe if he'd headed down South he'd have found a force more his speed.

“That's... progressive.”

“No.” Morse's tone is clipped, suddenly, his back straight as he folds his paper away. “Didn't work out.”

“Oh.”

“This – Annie. You know her?”

“Yeah?”

Morse looks at him, and he can't say he's ever felt quite as pinned in place as by this gaze. He couldn't look away if he wanted to. He thinks he wants to, wants to move away from this strange sergeant with the penetrating stare and the brain that bends and an ability to metabolise alcohol on a par with the Guv's. He swallows.

“Okay.”

_Morse_

Annie, it turns out, is sweet and lovely and in no way a Mason Gull-type threat. She's been working here for years, for one, and while her insights are useful, there are none of the warning signs he ignored last time around. She runs through what the rest of the team have already discussed, then leaves him, still camped out on a cleared edge of Tyler's desk, with a pat on the arm and a cup of tea.

Hunt yanks Tyler up by the arm and drags him out for something before they can get any further, and it leaves the rest of them cooling their heels. He'd like to check out the crime scene, see if that sparks anything loose, and maybe talk to the pathologist. Reading his notes in the file makes him miss Max with a tug in his gut that's almost visceral. They're scant, perfunctory. He can read between the few lines: the life of a prostitute is barely worth noting the particulars.

“Alright tenor?” A ball hits him in the head as he scans through the notes again, like there will suddenly be an extra page with information like – perhaps – her age, and if there'd been any recent sexual activity. He grimaces up at them. Since finding out he sang, these idiots seem to think 'tenor' is a fine insulting nickname. Like they're being clever.

“I'm going to talk to the pathologist.”

“No you're not.” A hand grabs him, and he yanks his way free. He looks DS Carling up and down with a sneer.

“Yes I am.”

“We already did it. You're staying here until the Guv gets back.”

“That's what you do, is it? Sit around playing games unless someone's told you otherwise?” He grabs the ball from Skelton's grasp, drops it to the side. “God forbid you actually tried to _solve a case_. You call yourself police officers-”

“I call meself a police _man_ , as it happens-” He grabs Morse by the collar, forcing him on to his tiptoes. Carling's not much taller than Morse but he's broader, and a brawler, and he smells of fags and stale coffee. Morse can tell he's itching to hit him.

Let him. Let Carling take a swing, let him try and see how long it takes for Bright to get on the phone, have Manchester brass demote him down to DC for attacking one of his own.

“You don't belong here,” he spits instead, shoving Morse away again, so he slips and catches himself on Tyler's desk. He takes a deep breath of cleanish air, and straightens his tie. More restraint than anticipated.

“No,” Morse says calmly, coolly. “I don't. Thankfully.”

Skelton leaps to put himself in the way, but there's no need – Carling might be snarling like a rabid dog, but he's not pushing it further today. Morse grabs the pathologist report from Tyler's desk and stands up again. “I'm going to talk to the pathologist.”

_\--_

In the end, it's not _easy_ , but it is solvable. The killer – a disturbed individual from Altrincham, who really should have had some creative outlet, maybe all this could have been avoided – isn't playing with them. He's laying out clues, and there are no double bluffs, no rugs pulled out, just a police force that can't speak his language.

Morse can. And within two days the man is in custody. He and Tyler interview him together, getting the whole confession on tape while Gene Hunt hangs in the corner like a bad smell, threat lingering over everything.

He admits it, of course. He was never trying to get away with it, not really. It's an open and shut, barely even need for a jury.

_Gene_

“You'll be getting back on a train, I wager?” Gene lights a cigarette when Ray hauls the man back off to the cells. No point offering round, not with these two.

“Yes.”

“You never once called me Guv,” he states, and out of the corner of his eye sees Sam roll his. He ejects the tape from the machine while Gene takes another thoughtful puff.

“You're not my Guv.”

Well that's right. Thank God. One poofter's enough in any nick, and while – grudgingly – he can admit this Morse character cracked the case, he ain't half glad to see the back of him, back on his way down South. The DCI down there had spoken highly, but if Morse is as snippy and bristly at home as he has been these past few days... well. He'd have thought they'd be jumping to be rid of him. Moody little sod. Up himself too, all this no first name business like they're a bleeding public school.

“Drinks tonight, yeah?” asks Sam. Gene catches him by the arm, and all three of them stare at it. “Celebrate a job well done,” Sam continues, and Gene hasn't quite let go yet. It's something in the way Morse's lips quirk, the way Sam angles himself, as if he wants to get in between Gene and Morse. He's not sure if its protective, if it's dismissive, if it's something else entirely.

“No, I-”

Gene makes his hand unclench, takes another drag on his cigarette and ignores the look Sam gives him.

All right fine. “One for the road, Morse. Sam's buying.”

“I- yeah, all right. I'm buying. Morse?”

“One for the road,” he agrees.

_Morse_

The scenery rushes by, his head full of the case still. One drink last night had turned into several, as they always do, but always Gene Hunt had been there, hovering over the table where he sat with Tyler and Annie.

They were both decent coppers. Outsiders. Tyler – Sam, as he's kept insisting - a bit too much like him, and Annie... well, a female DC's a turn up for the books, especially in a station that backward.

Good riddance to Carling and Skelton though. And Gene Hunt. Cracking his knuckles like police work's all about who hits hardest. He shakes his head as Hunt morphs into Thursday, fist buried in a grass' stomach.

No, not like that. Not on Hunt's level.

The train pulls into Oxford station, and he gathers his suitcase and steps down onto the platform. The air feels different here, cleaner, and he breathes great lungfuls of it. He stops at the bus stop, but he's just missed the one to his house, so he walks instead. Maybe he'll pop into the station. It'd be nice to see Bright and Strange.

As he walks, his feet transition from cobble to cement and back again, people slip past him and he edges past others. There's the smell of beer and smoke wafting from a pub's open doors, and the brief aroma of cooking on the breeze as he passes Christchurch; the college kitchens getting ready for the dinner sitting, going by the hour. The street lights flick on and the cars trundle past, and he dodges a group of students on their way to – or possibly, going by the caterwauling, back from – the pub.

The rhythms of Oxford seep back into his bones as he trots up the steps of the station, and he can feel Manchester cleaving away, leaving him free and easy. With a final deep breath of Oxford air, he pushes open the door.

Home.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this drafted for a while, and thought it was probably about time to bite the bullet and post it. If you're one of the three people out there in both fandoms, I hope you enjoyed it! :D


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